The bubble is always soft. Or, more accurately, people always say the bubble is soft. Almost a decade after the first 68-team bracket, the allegations leveled at the first expanded field have hardened into a late-winter rite of passage. You can’t have an NCAA Tournament without a bubble, and you can’t have a bubble without spending your February calling that bubble soft.

Last March, The Athletic’s Ken Pomeroy wrote the definitive piece on this phenomenon. Skeptical of sweeping “worst bubble ever” proclamations, Pomeroy dipped into his adjusted efficiency database, which dates to 2002, and pulled out the three best and worst bubbles from the previous 16 seasons. “Instead of saying, ‘This is the worst bubble ever,'” Ken wrote, “I’ll have a lot more respect for you if you say, ‘This bubble is nothing like it was in 2010.’ But more than anything, what this exercise has taught me is that there really isn’t much...